Samuel Wesley was born two years after the restoration of Charles II. He lived throughout the reigns of Charles, of James II., of William III., and Queen Mary, of Queen Anne, and of George I., and during the first eight years of the reign of George II. This covers a period of English history which, in thrilling interest and importance, is not surpassed by any other period within the compass of English annals.

Queen Anne died in the year 1714, and her death led to the immediate accession of George, Electoral Prince of Hanover, the great-grandson of James I. After reigning thirteen years, he was succeeded, in 1727, by his son, George II.

The last twenty years of Mr Wesley’s life were full of great events. Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Oxford, and the Duke of Ormond, were all impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours; Oxford was committed to the Tower; Bolingbroke and Ormond escaped to France, and there intrigued for the restoration of the Stuarts. The Earl of Mar erected the standard of James, the Pretender, son of James II., at Braemar, in Scotland, and the three Earls of Hume, Wigtown, and Kinnoul, Lord Deskford, and others, were arrested and laid fast in Edinburgh Castle. Mr Forster and the Earl of Derwentwater raised an insurrection in Northumberland, and proclaimed the Pretender, at Warkworth, with sound of trumpet. The insurgents marched to Preston, in Lancashire, where they relinquished their arms, and Forster, Derwentwater, and many other persons of distinction, were taken prisoners. The gaols of the north were filled with non-juring Protestants, High Church divines, Popish priests and monks, Jacobite squires, Highland chiefs, and Lowland lairds. Not a few of these were shot in heaps, and the rest, above five hundred, were left to starve of hunger and of cold. Meanwhile, the Pretender himself landed at Peterhead, made his public entry into Dundee, held a council at Perth, and ordered the burning of all the towns, villages, corn, and forage between Perth and Stirling,—an order which was too terribly carried into execution, the poor inhabitants, women and children, the aged and the infirm, being exposed to the extremities of the season in one of the coldest winters that had been known for many generations. Numbers of the poor sufferers perished of cold and hunger, and mothers, with their infants at the breast, were found dead among drifts of snow. The Pretender ultimately made a cowardly escape to France, and the Earl of Derwentwater, and many others, were, executed for high treason.

In the meantime, George I. quarrelled with his son, the Prince of Wales, about the christening of a baby, upon which his Royal Highness, being arrested and ordered to quit St James’s Palace, fixed his residence at Leicester House, which became the resort of the disaffected of all classes, and the centre of an increasing turmoil and intrigue.

The South Sea Company Bill was passed by Parliament, and the whole nation became intoxicated with percentages, dividends, and transfers. The stock suddenly rose from 130 to above 1000 per cent. Bubble companies sprang up round the mighty original like mushrooms round a rotten tree, and prospectuses were issued for making salt water fresh, for extracting silver out of lead, for importing asses from Spain to improve the breed of mules, for fatting hogs, for a wheel for perpetual motion, and for a thousand other things besides. ’Change Alley was crammed from morning till night with dukes, lords, country squires, parsons, Dissenting ministers, brokers, and jobbers, and men of every possible colour and description. Even the Prince of Wales became a governor of a Welsh Copper Company, and made a gambling profit by the illegal transaction of not less than £40,000. The bubbles soon burst. The South Sea stock, which sold in August at 1000, in September sunk below 300, and in November fell down to 135. Terrible excitement followed; disgraceful facts were published, and thousands of persons beggared. One of the political results was a change of government. Sunderland had to resign the premiership, and Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the high Tory, and one of the friends of Sacheverell, became prime minister, and, despite incessant attacks from political enemies of the most splendid talents, retained the high office for two and twenty years.

About the same time, the Polish wife of the Pretender gave birth to a son at Rome, in the presence of seven cardinals. The child, at a most royal christening, received the name of Charles Edward, and the event was proclaimed by the Jacobites in all parts of the United Kingdom. New plots against King George, and in favour of the Pretender and his infant child, were concocted, Bishop Atterbury being the chief of the intriguers. Atterbury and his friends engaged to get possession of the Tower, the Bank, and the Exchequer, and to proclaim King James III., simultaneously, in different parts of the country. The scheme exploded, and Lord North, Lord Orrery, and the Duke of Norfolk were arrested. Atterbury was brought before the Privy Council, and was committed to the Tower. The High Church party cried aloud against the sacrilegious arrest of a bishop. The clergy in London and Westminster offered public prayer for him. Alexander Pope, his bosom friend, was among Atterbury’s witnesses. The bishop was deprived of his bishopric, and banished from his country. He at once threw himself into the service of the Pretender, and became his confidential agent, first at Brussels, and afterwards at Paris. He died in exile in 1731.

George I. died of apoplexy, in 1727, whilst travelling with one of his mistresses, the Duchess of Kendal, to Hanover. At the time, the little, beggared, and vagabond court of the Pretender was distracted with all kinds of intrigues, jealousies, and animosities. Atterbury continued to cabal with priests, monks, and mistresses. James wished to make one more effort to obtain the throne of his fathers, but Atterbury could afford him no encouragement, and the scheme was dropped until it was revived by his son, Charles Edward, in 1745.

The principal ecclesiastical events which occurred during the decline of Mr Wesley’s life, were the censure pronounced by the Lower House of Convocation, in 1714, upon Dr Samuel Clark’s famous book, entitled, “The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity;” and the bitter and long-continued controversy arising out of Bishop Hoadley’s “Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors,” in the course of which Sherlock, Potter, and Hare took a prominent position, and not fewer than about seventy different publications were produced.

The social, moral, and religious condition of the country was still far from satisfactory. Gentlemen wore tie-wigs, and, instead of swords, carried large oak sticks, with great heads and ugly faces carved thereon; while ladies, when walking out of doors, wore masks, hooped petticoats, and scarlet cloaks. Places of political resort, called mug-houses, were established in all parts of London, where citizens and tradesmen attacked the Tories with such bitterness, under the double inspiration of ale and patriotism, that at length the mug-houses had to be suppressed by Act of Parliament. Royal mistresses were maintained at court, as a state appendage, and thereby public immorality was kept in countenance. The mercantile classes grew in wealth, and all who were of any respectability had the title of esquire appended to their names, so that Steele complains that England had now become a nation of esquires. The streets of London were still, for the most part, unpaved, and the kennels on both sides were usually choked up with all sorts of garbage. Pickpockets were numerous, and purses, snuff-boxes, and watches disappeared with a facility incomprehensible to the owners. The metropolis could boast of not more than a thousand lamps, which were kept burning only till midnight, and that for only one-half of the year. Prize fights were frequent, the gladiators, who mangled themselves with swords and daggers for the amusement of the crowd, subsisting upon the subscription purses and the admittance fees. In the country, the monotonous toils of the peasantry were enlivened chiefly by wakes and fairs, thronged with puppet shows, pedlars’ stalls, raffling tables, and drinking booths. Among the favourite competitions at fairs, were grinning matches, in which the candidates grinned most hideously through a horse’s collar; and trials in whistling, where the person who could whistle through a whole tune without being put out by the drolleries of a merry-Andrew that were played off before him, was the victor. At Christmas, trials of yawning for a Cheshire cheese took place at midnight, and he who gave the widest and most natural yawn, so as to set the whole company agape in sympathy, carried off the cheese in triumph. Young damsels, anxious to know something of their future husbands, were directed to run until they were out of breath, as soon as they heard the first notes of the cuckoo, after which, on pulling off their shoes, they would find in them a hair of the same colour as that of their future mates. On May-day, a girl had only to bring home a snail, and lay it upon the ashes of the hearth, and, in crawling about, the reptile would mark the initial letter of her true love’s name. It is true, that the belief in antique rites like these was fast departing, but still such spells were practised in many a peasant’s hut and farmer’s home long after Mr Wesley’s death.

Towards the end of the reign of George I. the wages of a farm bailiff were not above £6 a year; and of other farm-servants, from £2 10s. to £5. The wages of female servants were from thirty to fifty shillings yearly. Masons, carpenters, and plumbers received a shilling a day without meat, or sixpence a day with it. Wheat sold for about five shillings a bushel, but the great bulk of the people were too poor to purchase it. Even families that were reputed rich used not more than a peck of wheat a year, and that was used at Christmas. Bread loaves and pie crusts were made of barley-meal, and puddings and dumplings, made of oatmeal and suet, were a common dish at rural entertainments. The price of beef and mutton was about 2½d. per pound, of butter, about 5d., and of Cheshire cheese, about 3d.[[235]]